On the streets beyond the empty club, harder hip-hop will fare no better. It's already long gone from the charts and seldom intersects with mainstream pop culture, but in 2013, we will officially pass "peak hip-hop," when dopeness becomes a diminishing return. We'll watch the painful attrition on WorldStar, where the unsigned hype will slow to a trickle. The new tracks will be gradually replaced by viral content, and children born in 2013 will never know "hip-hop" as anything more than videos of bus scuffles and big-booty models. Chief Keef — the last rapper — will die in 2083; the tradition of MCing will die with him, and the four pillars will crumble; to future scholars, their ruins will be inscrutable as Stonehenge.

Oh, and rock music will die because of Mumford & Sons, but everyone already knew that.

THE BIG HURT: DIVING IN THE PR DUMPSTER | February 26, 2013 I've been dumpster diving in the PR bin, the rankest receptacle of music industry waste, and I've come up with a dripping fistful of the month's hottest garbage.

THE BIG HURT: LEANIN' WITH BIEBS | February 20, 2013 Bieber was allegedly photographed sipping something from a double Styrofoam cup, in close proximity to a big bottle of codeine cough syrup. This can only add up to one thing: lean . That purple drank, the laudanum of Screw, the deadly nectar of Pimp C.